Environmental services worker Colleen Buzikevich takes part in a wildcat strike outside the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton on Feb. 16, 2012.
Support staff at a dozen Alberta hospitals are being asked by their union to return to work after a deal was struck to end a brief wildcat strike Thursday.
Members of a union that includes 1,700 support workers – porters, food-service workers, janitors, people who clean surgical equipment and other non-medical staff – walked out of Edmonton's Royal Alexandra Hospital around 7 a.m. local time Thursday, catching provincial health officials off guard. About 300 gathered outside the hospital.
As word spread throughout the day, others followed in approximately 20 health centres throughout the province, most of them in or near Edmonton. Between 600 and 800 people took part in the strike, according to health board estimates.
After just over nine hours, a deal was struck that will see the workers' union and the provincial health board return to the bargaining table under binding arbitration as soon as next week. The Alberta Union of Public Employees asked its members to go back to work Thursday and Alberta Health Services, the agency responsible for delivering health services in the province, agreed not to penalize those who walked out. Staff were expected by both sides to be back at work by 6:30 p.m. local time.
"We're asking our members to go back to work. They found their voice and were heard loud and clear," said AUPE president Guy Smith said, adding that the deal "flowed out of the strike." He said he is confident a contract agreement will be reached quickly. "We don't think it'll take too much to get there, honestly, but the members were just so agitated and frustrated with the attitude of AHS."
Neither side had previously asked for binding arbitration, but they agreed to it Thursday as a way to quickly resolve the strike, said Stephen Gould, AHS's executive vice-president of people and partners.
The illegal strike had shuttered parts of the Royal Alexandra Hospital, one of the two largest in Edmonton. Some procedures – at last 68 at that hospital alone as of 4:30 p.m. local time – were cancelled due to the strike. The cancellations led to a standoff outside the hospital, with patients and families confronting strikers Thursday morning.
"You people are disgusting and despicable, shutting down a hospital," shouted Alan Pollock, who came from Lethbridge with his 82-year-old mother for her eye operation at the Royal Alexandra only to see it cancelled after the strike. Cheering union workers drowned out his shouts.
"There was no warning," he added later. "There are better ways of doing it."
Another woman screamed, "You guys are hooligans," and slapped a microphone from the hand of Colleen Buzikevich, a cleaner who has worked for six years at the hospital. The job starts at $16 an hour.
"We're the backbone of the hospital and we're taken for granted," said Ms. Buzikevich, adding that she understands the anger patients and families feel.
"To me it's frustration on their side. I can understand – patient care is suffering. But we're also suffering," she said.
Hospital staff – who lost their right to strike legally when the Ralph Klein government declared them an essential service – are locked in a bitter contract dispute, having overwhelmingly voted down a three-year offer recommended by a previous mediator of annual 2-per-cent raises. They've been without a contract since March 31, 2011, and also want boosted benefits in line with those offered to nurses. Wages, however, are the main sticking point.
Union negotiators want a two-year deal with raises of 2, then 4 per cent, according to government negotiators. The province's most recent offer was a three-year deal with a lump sum 2-per-cent raise for the past year, 2 per cent for the next year and a raise tied to the cost of living in the final year.
"We just want a fair wage. Two per cent just doesn't cut it with everything out here today," said Al Pelletier, a housekeeper with 40 years of service who says he earns roughly $18 an hour. "Right now, they feel they've had enough and they want Alberta Health Services back to the table."
AHS had applied to the independent Alberta Labour Relations Board to formally rule the strike illegal, and still hoped that hearing would take place. "Due process has to be followed through. This was clearly an AUPE wildcat strike," said Chris Mazurkewich, Alberta Health Services executive vice-president and chief operating officer. He'd earlier condemned the action, saying the union should have stayed at the bargaining table instead of disrupting hospital services. "Labour actions that impact patient care are not reasonable or acceptable," he had said.
Workers say a raise of 2 per cent for people making less than $20 an hour is paltry and doesn't keep pace with Alberta's booming economy. The province's budget, tabled earlier this month, projects annual GDP growth of 3.8 per cent and increased the health budget 7.9 per cent. "Our budget at AHS pays for many things, not just labour, so we tabled what we thought was a reasonable offer," Mr. Gould said.
The crowd outside the Royal Alexandra was a mixed bag – workers young and old, some in street clothes and others in hospital scrubs, cheering as honking cars (and, in one case, an ambulance blaring its siren in support) drove past. One striker was Fatima Sousa, who began working for Edmonton hospitals in 1986, earning $10 an hour. Twenty-six years later, she earns $18.62 an hour.
"I feel sorry for the patients, but we have to do this," she said.
Mr. Smith, the union president, said the disruption was regrettable but necessary. "We know the public was inconvenienced somewhat, but this was about building long-term stability in the health system," he said.